“I am an interesting person,” says Leona Clawson, standing amidst stacks of paintings about to be installed as her first solo exhibition at the Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts, an Edmonton space dedicated to artists with developmental disabilities. Clawson’s tone conveys a note of triumph. She was not always perceived as interesting or talented. With complications at birth and lifelong epileptic seizures, Clawson has spent most of her life in institutions. Some of her experiences carry painful memories. But after coming to the centre 10 years ago, her demeanour changed. She developed a new vision of herself as an artist.

“Nina Haggerty lets people see that whole other side of the person,” says Paul Freeman, artistic director of the centre, which is run by highly regarded Edmonton artists. He has watched Clawson, and many others, transform from people who saw themselves as disabled, living in group homes or folding clothes at Goodwill, to new identities as artists. Clawson epitomizes the centre’s success. “She wakes up in the morning and wants to make things,” Freeman says. Clawson attends four days a week and works with such ferocious dedication that she often doesn’t respond when called. She actually dreads holidays. “We just had Christmas and I couldn’t come here,” she says. “During the weekends, I get bored.”

Her prolific output has one consistent theme: rustic countryside. Her paintings depict countless bird’s-eye views of farms with tiny figures reaping fields, collecting honey and riding in wagons across snowy landscapes. There’s even a couple kissing in a verdant field. This subject matter is startling given that Clawson, born in Winnipeg in 1947, grew up surrounded by urban scenes. As a child, she rarely left her home due to fears of seizures. Even now, she seldom ventures past city limits. Her main experiences with rural landscapes were childhood holidays as well as a brief stay with her great-aunt and uncle on their farm near Brandon, Man. Yet residual impressions of the uplifting serenity of the Prairies are burned into her memory and relived in each of her storybook-like paintings.

For Clawson, art is a refuge. Every time she sits down to paint, she enters a story of her creation, allowing her to escape troubling thoughts. “If I come here, I have to think about what I am painting,” she says. “I feel in a world of my own.” And in this world she crafts in paint, clay and, sometimes, fabric, people contentedly go about their daily work. Her imagination is a free, peaceful, happy place. “The art takes me away from the world,” she says. “The world is too busy for me. That’s what’s wrong with it. That’s why I like painting.”